Anonymity : Chaining Proxies

For those who are unable to or just do not want to configure the browser to use a proxy, you can use web based proxies to surf. Some countries have now enabled proxies that all users of that country must go through which heavily restrict what sites are visited. Ways to overcome this are to encrypt the url prior to requesting it so the ISP level censored proxy can't block it.

Proxy Server : Set Up

1. Right click the Internet Explorer icon on your desktop
2. Click on "Properties"
3. Click the "Connections" tab
4. Click Settings
5. Click the box alonside "Use a proxy server"
6. Enter the proxy server details

Proxy Server : Chaining Proxies

Although most Internet users have used a proxy server at least once, not many of them really understand how it works. This paragraph provides the basics on proxy servers, which are necessary for understanding of proxy chaining. In case you have already acquired this knowledge from some other source feel free to jump directly to the next paragraph.
A proxy server is actually a gateway to the Internet for all connected to it computers (clients). It receives requests from the clients – like viewing a web page, connecting to an FTP server etc., - forwards them to the Internet and returns the response. The diagram below shows how a typical request is processed in the regular way and using a proxy server.

Without a Proxy
--------------------
1. [User] ---> [web page]
2. [User] <--- [web page]


With a Proxy
----------------
1. [User] ---> [Proxy Server] ---> [web page]
2. [User] <--- [Proxy Server] <--- [web page]

To speed up loading of web pages proxy servers store retrieved web pages in its cache. So, if a client request a web page, which has been requested earlier by any other client, this request is processed much faster. An obvious drawback of this feature is lack of synchronization if you visit an online news site (like CNN or Yahoo) you expect to see it in the up-to-date state and not as it has been retrieved for somebody else hours ago. To overcome this problem proxy servers refresh the content of their cache, usually every 10 minutes.

Proxy's cache
-----------------
1. [User] ---> [Proxy] Check if exits in cache, if yes pull it out
Otherwise connect to server


Proxy Chaining
-------------------
Proxy chaining is merely connecting to more than one proxy and then to connect to your intended destination. There is no limit on the amount of proxies you can use and you can use as many proxy servers as you want. The more you have, the more anonymous you will be on the net.
Lets take a simple example of Proxy chaining:

[User] ---> [proxy1] ---> [proxy2] ---> [proxy3] ---> [web site]

In the example above shows that for a proxy chain to be created, the user must first connect to proxy1. Once a connection is established, the user connects from proxy1 to proxy2, from proxy2 he connects to proxy3 and finally he connects to a web site or any other destination. If we look at the process above, we see that all together we have three proxies and to each proxy in this chain we call "link". The use of proxy chaining is very useful when you try to stay anonymous on the Internet because if someone tries to follow your tracks it will find the IP (Internet Protocol) of Proxy4. The problem with proxy chaining and with proxy servers in general is that they "die out" in few weeks and if one "link" is dead the entire chain is broken.

Even though you will never be totally anonymous of the Internet and no matter what will you use. The concept of using proxy chaining is to make the tracking work much harder than before.